Mac Slow Down - Is It The End?>

[ns450]

My iMac G4 (with the angle poise screen) was a wonder. Just under two years old, of late it has got slower and slower with frequent sluggish periods, spinning wheel of death is a regular visitor to the desktop. Yet HD still has 19gigs free out of 80 - which ive read elsewhere should be ok. I did try updateing to Tiger recently in an attemp to remedy these problems. Just gave me a scary period of black screen with 80s liiking PC text!

So now Internet is slow, mail slow, printer and scanner are misbehaving.
Clearly it needs a drastic clean up. And possibly a rebuild somewhere. But i dont know where to start.

Is there some way of diagnosing the problem?
Failing that is there an agency in NY (that isnt Apple) who can come to my home and give it a look over?

 

[steelfist]

solution 1. use disk utility and repair permissions. also, use activity monitor and see if there are any cpu and memory hogging.

solution 2. for your slow internet, turn off the modem and router for 10 minuetes, and turn both back on. if the internet is still slow, it's your computer that is the problem

solution 3. get more ram

solution 4. backup important files and do complete reinstal

solution 5. get a new computer

 

[MacAficionado]

Your iMac should be cruising along without problems. I would recommend going to Disk Utility and Repair Permissions and Verify Disk. If something comes out wrong with the Verify Disk, then you have to boot from the Tiger disk and Repair Disk. See if that does not work, you might have to get something like Drive Genius or DiskWarrior.

I'm not from NY but I'm sure there are plenty of Apple Consultant Network people to call there if you need help.

Hope that helps.

 

[kbonnel]

I had the same kind of issue with my powerbook. All of a sudden it started to act real slow, everything was taking much longer. Even searching the web took forever. Turned out too be a bad hard drive. Replaced it, and all was much better.

Kimo

 

[untamedhysteria]

as what was just said, it sounds more like a harddrive problem. or, you could simply have a lot of permission errors, which disk utility *should* fix. also, try running sudo periodic daily weekly monthly to rotate and fix your logs after you run repair permissions in disk utility...just to make sure all the logs are rotated. another issue might be if you are doing a lot of shares with windows pc's on your network. try disconnecting the shares if you have them.

 

[Jigglelicious]

During times like this I always recommend a fresh reinstall of OS X. There are a lot of people on these boards that say its not necessary, but any OS gets clogged with useless junk over the years which just aids in slowing it down. Backup your stuff and do a fresh "erase & install" installation of Tiger, and that should hopefully bring your iMac back to full speed, barring any actual hardware problems.

 

[ns450]

Thanks

Thanks to all who posted suggestions. Seems permissions repair might be the first option. Do i need to back up everything first?
appreciated
ns450

 

[skunk]

Thanks to all who posted suggestions. Seems permissions repair might be the first option. Do i need to back up everything first?

Not usually just to repair permissions, but if you suspect your HD is on the way out, it would seem like a very good idea.

 

[IJ Reilly]

Weighing in from the "clean installing is a total waste of time" side of the argument... please take ALL of the other measures suggested first. If you've never repaired permissions before, then by all means, you must do this first and remember to do it about once a month hereafter. This is Mac maintenance 101! If that doesn't do the trick, I (or we) can suggest several other, completely non-disruptive and totally free maintenance steps to try before giving up. (Clean installing is giving up. A clean install should be the step right before throwing the Mac in the trash.)

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

Back it up
Smak it up
Jak it up....

BEFORE it jaks u up

 

[doucy2]

Back it up
Smak it up
Jak it up....

BEFORE it jaks u up

excelent wording
but is true
this def sound like a hd problem to me
if you are proficient with macs and feel comfortable working inside one
ide switch out the hd with another one and see if that helps any

dont do it though if you dont know wat you are doing

 

[Plymouthbreezer]

One more vote for a Erase & Install.

That will fix any software issues. If you still have problems after that, it's hardware.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

excelent wording
but is true
this def sound like a hd problem to me
dont do it though if you dont know wat you are doing

yep....meandering around inside an iMac is NOT a task for prr's ('puter repair rookies) Many hidden dangers inside

 

[me_94501]

My iMac G4 (with the angle poise screen) was a wonder. Just under two years old, of late it has got slower and slower with frequent sluggish periods, spinning wheel of death is a regular visitor to the desktop. Yet HD still has 19gigs free out of 80 - which ive read elsewhere should be ok. I did try updateing to Tiger recently in an attemp to remedy these problems. Just gave me a scary period of black screen with 80s liiking PC text!

So now Internet is slow, mail slow, printer and scanner are misbehaving.
Clearly it needs a drastic clean up. And possibly a rebuild somewhere. But i dont know where to start.

Is there some way of diagnosing the problem?
Failing that is there an agency in NY (that isnt Apple) who can come to my home and give it a look over?

First thing's first, check the hard drive. A bad hard drive can screw things up badly. Disk Utility and verify the disk.